Upstairs
by Momosportif
Summary: An intensely obscure Zephi flufflet. It takes place in Ashera's tower, essentially the hypothetical exchange between the two as Sephiran continued up and left Zelgius to defend his post on floor two. Enjoy if you so desire, boys are Nintendo's.


Just as a warning... this is super confusing, perhaps beyond reason. I'll be glad to answer questions and this may help:

Any description of low high, or higher looking up is about Zelgius because he's subservient to Sephiran but significantly taller.

Any description of high low, or lower with a downcast gaze/looking down is about Sephiran because he's status-wise above Zelgius but a wee bit shorter.

Also, "is not" is referring to Levail. And the are nots is the rest of the army.

So, that probably won't help you, but enjoy if possible '-_-

* * *

Upstairs

The soles are soft, but the halls carry each step and bounce it sharply off the walls.

The synchronized military paces surge after and wipe out his nobly reserved echoes without even allowance for a fade.

Despite their sizable height discrepancy, he manages to look up from above as a familiar wave of ebony reveals a translucent smile in cream, "You will stand here." Here meaning the veritable chasm of a room they'd marched seemingly leagues to reach, you meaning he and his goddess blessed army, I being a pronoun unaccounted for (but not sought after).

The low high one nods to a man who may as well not be, he will stand there- there meaning the doorway, he meaning the he that is and will be not, I being a pronoun previously described as the fore-part of you (and sought by not, seeking for I). Is not nods to are nots, the order echoing though the feet could not (and the smile surely dies behind its projection). High-low watches with serenity as space fluctuates to positions before the nothing scene is interrupted by a minimally approaching inquirer.

"My lord…" So steady stays the lower smile yet upheld, so tremulous the higher physiognomy yet bowed.

"Come."

He watches the dumb procession of paces lead him across the abysmal length of a tomb for nonexistent damned (goddess-blessed), and he strives to move as lightly as a man with wings because the drops of boots take no prisoners. He wonders, such is the walk, if they will tread again into the delicate falls of the tender soles, which stop, which turn (without a sound). From above he forces his gaze up to the lower smile held aloft, knowing it is as guiltlessly false as ever it was (and will not be).

"You will stand here."

"I will die here." A crack in the eternal composure. "He is coming. I am ready, I will die. Is this as you will?" Diplomacy as fluid as thought falters in a second's silence.

"The second floor can affordably fall."

"It shall with maximum endurance employed." If he were higher looking down, the drowned step may have been heard, the approach foreseen of lower, eyes cast up.

"Does it please you?"

A guarded gesture of elevated subservient indulgence, "It is time. It is his right."

Jade is jaded, looks away in consideration.

"You are afraid." Centimeters are realized, he finds himself above, staring down in shock. "Tell me- why?" They watch properly for once, the shorter softly trained on the vastly taller breaking down.

"M-…" the consonant sounds, drops to the air, which slams it against the walls. The higher smile rests fallen, a seam between its lines.

"I, too, will die."

"M- my Lord-"

"It has long been time." Serenity rises and a protest is lulled, making no descent.

"We will fail? They will reach the top?" Confusion too feebly blocked by its self same self slaps stone. "Will she fall?"

The beautiful falsity in pallid hues truths a neutral frown.

"It is the nature of the living, is it not? They must fail all our expectations, and if we say they will lose, they naturally must win." He stares down, lost indeed, watching a life's worth of lies meet his eyes, a life's worth of everyone fading from the shoes up into death's worth of no one. And he wonders.

"My Lord, Sephiran, were you happy?"

Composure plummets, cascades against the floors, rains upon the ceiling, pummels the walls until his ears ring and a skeleton of the intentions remains exposed.

An apologetic breath cues a glance away that whispers no.

"Ah-… I enjoyed my time with you." For the first (last (only)) time, his most habitual lie manifests itself as truth, the slightest of smiles held high from below. He aches to know this, hearing only the absence of a yes or a no, and knowing so well the answer, and he returns the weary gesture back down from his height.

"I shall see you after then," he bows.

Smile intact, he touches his shoulder, revealing impermanence in the lightness of fingertips.

"Do you truly think we are going to the same place?"

His eyes shift up to watch composure retreat, steadily and regally, feet falling as though he had never moved away. He will die with these words as the familiar wave of ebony drifts into stone shadows to leave the world in solitude as it was fated to do.

It is ended with a soft sound in a prematurely dead silence- echoes.


End file.
